


Impermanence

by failsafe



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Gen, Legends, Melancholy, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Philosophy, Post-Canon, Trick or Treat: Autumn, Trick or Treat: Trick, Worldbuilding - Philosophy/Religion, air nomad culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-25
Updated: 2017-10-25
Packaged: 2019-01-22 20:40:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12490400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/failsafe/pseuds/failsafe
Summary: Aang, Katara, and Zuko compare stories.





	Impermanence

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silveradept](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silveradept/gifts).



 

Katara clears her throat. She changes her position a little, straightening out her body where she leans against her elbow. She is able to feel her voice a little better now.

“Long ago,” she begins, intoning it as she would have for some of the children back in her homeland. Now that peace reigns across the world – in the Water Tribe, the Earth Kingdom, and even here in the Fire Nation – it seems like an appropriate time to tell the story the way she had learned it. She glances over at Aang, not faltering very much but considering the fact that there are really only _three_ nations now, unless she counts the Earth Kingdom refugees who have taken up residence at the Northern Air Temple. Unless Aang counts them. “... the four nations lived together in harmony—”

The sharp exhale of breath she hears makes her bristle. She looks away from Aang at the culprit. She can see the bitter ghost of a smirk dying away from his lips already. 

“Hey,” she admonishes him. “I was telling it the way we learned it.” She says it so fiercely from her reclined position that she can almost feel someone else – her brother, though he isn't here at the moment – finding it comical. She would dare them too. 

“I'm sorry,” Zuko says, shaking his head. His voice is held a little low in his throat, not as clear as it has needed to be, lately. “It's just... we learned a much different story here.” He looks up, around his large, private chambers. 

The three of them are seated around a raised little oven – a fire-pit – made of metal, but it only gives off faint, low cooking heat. Anything else and Katara might have protested, now that there is time for those kinds of complaints. It is always so hot in the Fire Nation, even at this time of year when – elsewhere in the world – heat has already begun dying away for winter.

“Do you want to tell it then?” Katara asks, realizing only after she has blurted out the question that it might have been a little harsh. Given where they are. Given who he is. Not that she's worried the Fire Lord is going to throw her in a dungeon, this time. 

“Not really,” Zuko murmurs. 

Aang sits up straighter, taking up more vertical space than he used to. 

“I'll do it,” he says. He smiles, but Katara notices that his smile is sad. His eyes look tired, too, even though they hadn't especially mere moments before when he had been ready to listen to her instead. She cannot bring herself to interrupt him, though, because something about his demeanor seems like something she should revere. It seems holy, sacred, and it sends a welcome chill up her spine to remember that it is possible for him to be like this. 

“You don't... have to...” Zuko chimes in cautiously while Aang is collecting himself. Katara almost moves from her reclining cushion to swat at Zuko for interrupting the important, heavy silence, but she doesn't. Aang doesn't seem to be bothered, but either way he begins to speak. 

“The way we learned it,” he said, “the Avatar's passing was like a holy day. When the word went out over the world that the last Avatar had died, the first night afterward until its darkest hour would be a time of mourning. Then, at the faintest sign of light, there was a celebration because the new Avatar had been born someplace in the next nation.” He paused, then plastered on a lopsided smile. “Of course, I don't remember it. I was busy being born the last time it happened, I guess.” 

“You've spoken with Avatar Roku,” Zuko says. Katara forgets her annoyance with him in favor of curiosity. She tilts her head to listen, to see if there's more. 

“Yes,” Aang says, holding onto the syllable for a moment longer than necessary, then waiting. 

“The things we heard about him—” Zuko says, but as he often does, he stops talking in the middle of a sentence. He waits, takes a deep, slow, apparent breath, and continues along a new path. “I guess I'd never really thought it through that hard, going that far back. The Avatar before Roku, and the Avatar before that...” 

“I'm aware of all of them,” Aang interjects, apparently hoping that will help. Katara meets his eyes. He is apparently as intrigued and confused as she is. 

“It's just an awful lot of death. A lot of leaving people behind,” Zuko says, rather bluntly. “I was so worried that I'd never find you, to earn my father's _forgiveness_ and my _honor_ ,” he says, narrowly avoiding spitting the descriptions. It makes Katara's skin crawl to hear him carry the weight of those words and no longer shy away from them. She wonders if it really helps or if it'll ever change. “I never got to think about what _the Avatar_ was but some impossible prize.” 

Katara doesn't know what to say. Apparently, Aang doesn't either until, suddenly, he does. 

“Thank you,” he says dryly. 

Katara watches as Zuko's eyes narrow at him. It is enough to make her chuckle, and she thinks Aang has won in his quest to lighten the weight that had fallen over them for a moment. 

“I think I always imagined, when I was very young, that the Avatar must have run out of whatever... made the Avatar be reborn,” Zuko explains. He sounds so lost that Katara wonders if he has ever spoken to anyone about this before, even Iroh. For some reason, the thought gives her a nervous tightness in her stomach. “Sometimes, it almost sounded like they wanted us to believe that he gave up on being reborn outside the Fire Nation because the Fire Nation was the best. The Fire Nation needed to be the only one. But... we all know that's not true.” 

Katara doesn't even know if Zuko is speaking to them or simply in their presence toward the end of that. She finds a way, this time, to nudge him. 

“I'm still right here,” Aang assures him. 

“So... we believed the four nations lived in harmony. At least, in the past hundred years, the Fire Nation believed in... something other than harmony,” Katara concludes, drawing the ideas together, not really sure where she is going with it until she gets there. She just knows it is some effort at keeping a chill that certainly hasn't come from the weather that blows in from outside to settle over the whole afternoon or their whole visit to the Fire Nation. “What did your people believe in Aang?” she asks, trying her best for a hopeful tone rather than sad. She wishes she could will her smile not to show the latter. 

Aang looks up, studies her eyes, and then looks to Zuko's, apparently doing the same. 

“Impermanence,” he says, soft and simple, and Katara cannot tell how that word will touch the rest of the day, into the night, and on to the next dawn. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wasn't sure whether to label it as a trick or a treat, but I think it is very slightly more melancholy than happy. Since you asked for either, I hope that's okay. I also tagged it with gen or ship tags because I think it can be read either way. I hope you enjoyed it! Happy Halloween/best time of the year!


End file.
